Farmers like Neftali Torres Campos have been waiting for decades for the lining of Canal Revolución, which conveys water from the Colorado River to their fields south of the Arizona border.

Now a groundbreaking U.S.-Mexico agreement is finally making it a reality. Three U.S. water agencies have joined forces with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, paying $18 million toward the lining of a 10-mile stretch of the canal. In exchange, they will be receiving 124,000 acre-feet of water being stored by Mexico at Lake Mead.

Lining the canal, a project designed to prevent seepage and increase the reliability of water deliveries, “has always been a dream of ours,” said Torres, 79, who grows cotton on his 89-acre parcel outside the border town of San Luis Río Colorado.

“It’s a great project that we’ve been waiting for years to happen,” he said. “It’s a benefit for everyone, for us and for California.”

The arrangement is part of a five-year agreement known as Minute 319 that was signed by the U.S. and Mexican federal governments in 2012 under the auspices of the 1944 U.S.-Mexico water treaty. The provisions, being overseen by the binational International Boundary and Water Commission, or IBWC, and its Mexican counterpart, CILA, include measures aimed at restoring wetlands in the Colorado River Delta.

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A key component of the agreement is the extension of a previous accord, Minute 318, that for the first time allowed Mexico to store water at Lake Mead following an April 2010 earthquake that tore apart canals in the Mexicali Valley.

The three U.S. water agencies subsidizing the Mexican canal lining project are the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which supplies San Diego County; Southern Nevada Water Authority, which serves Las Vegas; and the Central Arizona Project, which supplies Phoenix and Tucson.

The water agencies, which are jointly chipping in $10 million, will share the one-time 95,000 acre-feet bonus of water made available by the conservation. Metropolitan will get half of the water, with the other half evenly divided by the two other agencies, said Bill Hasencamp, Colorado River program manager at Metropolitan Water District. An additional 29,000 acre-feet would go to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and held in its reservoir system for future use, according to the IBWC.

Mexico will reap a recurring benefit in more efficient water use.

“San Diego County and MWD have already spent millions of dollars on agricultural conservation projects in California that provide benefits to both sectors,” Hasencamp said. “Minute 319 allows for a new partnership with Mexico.”

As water districts, states and now Mexico plan together to store water and remove it from whatever place appears most appropriate, such arrangements raise hopes that the vast, disparate local supply systems along the Colorado River begin to function more like one unified system, with increased efficiency for all participants.

“On the one hand, the issue is that there is not enough water in the basin to satisfy demands the way we’re using water right now,” said Osvel Hinojosa, of the Mexican environmental organization Pronatura Noroeste, who participated in the negotiating of Minute 319. “We really need to improve efficiency, and doing it binationally opens the door for the bigger investment capacity that is in the U.S., and that can really help improve the infrastructure in the Mexicali Valley.”

According to the IBWC, the exact timing of the canal lining has not been finalized, but it must be completed before the agreement expires at the end of 2017.

Proponents of the project say it could help ease bad memories in Mexico of a canal-lining project in the United States.

That project lined the All-American Canal so water previously lost through seepage could be sent to San Diego County. It was part of a landmark water pact signed in 2003. But while San Diego County celebrated the new source of water, Mexican farms partly irrigated by that seepage lost out.

Mexican growers also lost water after construction of the Warren H. Brock Reservoir near Yuma. Called Drop 2 during construction, the reservoir replaced a leaky one, which also resulted in less water percolating south of the border.

“They were not happy with the lining of the All-American Canal, with the funding of Drop 2 Reservoir, and they were not part of the 2007 guidelines that divvied things up in the U.S.,” Hasencamp said. “There was distrust and even some litigation prior to 10 years ago. But we moved beyond that with Minute 319.”

Steve Mumme, a Colorado State University professor who has closely studied and written about Minute 319, was more cautious in his assessment. “I think there has been some gain in trust because of this process,” he said. But he added that the possibility of shortages makes everybody nervous.

“You have people talking together and you have a better bureaucratic process for thinking about what’s needed,” Mumme said. “The lasting gain here is probably more procedural than substantive.”

Roberto Salmón, commissioner of the Mexican section of the boundary commission, CILA, said the friction over the All-American lining project was the impetus for talks between U.S. and Mexican authorities starting in 2007 that led to a series of accords on the Colorado River, including Minute 319, set to expire in 2017.

“We’d like to extend Minute 319, and in addition explore other things, that we’re going to be trying to define in the upcoming months,” Salmón said.

Could there be further cross-border water transfers? Salmón sees it is as a distinct possibility. “I think so. Water transfers occur in the United States, in Mexico. There is no reason why they can’t be between two countries, if we find the right framework,” he said.

The new lining project aims to improve the efficiency of water deliveries through Mexico’s Canal Revolución, which runs through Sonora and Baja California, carrying Colorado River water in the southeastern part of the vast irrigation district overseen by Mexico’s National Water Commission that is known as Distrito de Riego 014.

The southern stretch of the canal was lined in the 1970s, but the northern end has remained unlined — and today is an uneven waterway overrun with weeds. That means that the water is often dirty and deliveries are delayed, and much water is lost through seepage. The canal must occasionally be shut down to remove obstructions.

Officials with Mexico’s National Water Commission have estimated that the lining project could annually save more than 20 million cubic meters of water, or slightly more than 16,000 acre-feet annually.

But the plan has not sat well with farmers who rely on wells near the canal’s banks, and fear the water levels will drop as a result of the canal’s lining. Officials with Mexico’s water commission say those affected will be compensated with water conserved through the lining project.

Oscar Zepeda, a grower in the area and president of the Distrito de Riego Río Colorado, an association of 22 irrigation districts in Baja California and Sonora supplied by the Colorado River, said the district supports the project.

“What’s important is that we’re going to be saving water,” he said. “We Mexicans are hoping that the lining can be an example for our U.S. neighbors, to show them that we can do things right in Mexico.”